Catfish Frantic
and a father with a fishing pole | five starving children |
two sisters at home and a brother in rehab | little sister at the shore
glove to hold fish | hook in the mouth | desperate
& hungry | father never taught us how to gut fish ||
And so we eat the fish whole
And raw
Our children picking barbs from inside their cheeks
Copyright © 2014 b: william bearheart. This poem originally appeared in Tupelo Quarterly. Reprinted with the permission of Carrie Bearheart.
b: william bearhart
b: william bearhart is a direct descendent of the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin. A graduate of the Lo-Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, bearhart’s work appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (W. W. Norton, 2020).